Ancestral Roofs

"In Praise of Older Buildings"

Monday, February 6, 2017

Calling Card

Victorian visiting etiquette.
I've learned a bit about the formalities, and about many other aspects of Victorian life, during my volunteer years at Glanmore National Historic Site.
The lives of Victorian society ladies revolved around 'visiting.' Each lady would have her day to be 'at home' for other ladies to arrive for tea and dainties, consumed while attired in hat and gloves, sitting on the edge of their seats, bolt upright in corsetted and bustled elegance.

even Americans visited

On days when one just dropped in, one offered a visiting card to the maid who answered the door, and waited in the reception room to see if herself might be at home, and deign to pop down for a chat. If not, the card would be left on a tray in the hall, for later action.

These lovely mementos are part of a collection of visiting cards and post cards I received from our Pierce grandmother.

Their purpose is to announce our visit to Camden East last week and our intention to return, when the weather is more hospitable, for a walk down Queen Victoria Street to have a closer look at its lovely Second Empire home, and right to the end to this lovely skeletal barn with its brave little roof lantern.

Great Architecture quotes

"The sins of the Architect are permanent sins" Frank Lloyd Wright, 1914

"In the end, we conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught." ~Baba Dioum, Senegalese poet (Posted in January on the ACO Acorn online)

"It is forbidden to disfigure external decorations on private buildings through modern additions and to spoil historic buildings in an important town out of avarice and the desire to make money." - Theodosius, Valentinianus, Arcadius (309 A.D.)

"It has been said that at its best, preservation engages the past in a conversation with the present over a mutual concern for the future" - William Murtagh (1988)

"Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact". - John Kenneth Galbraith (1979)

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines" - Frank Lloyd Wright

"Architecture is the art of how to waste space" - Philip Johnson

"Architecture is frozen music" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Photo Gallery

"Caught in passing"

Striker/Walmsley House 1868

Albert Street beauty

Fort William Collegiate Institute - "they don't make 'em like they used to"